Balustrade

Some non-pool players think that the stairs make Atlantis. They certainly took more than their share of work.

	Here's the end result, complete with lights inside the birdseye maple handrail.
	Using a CAD package, I built the staircase, newel, landings, and handrail. Then I started filling in the balustrade with curvy wrought iron to see how it looked best. This was a 3D model, so I could examine it from multiple angles to see which way looked best overall. To the left is the winner - click to enlarge.
	Here is the original CAD drawing of the proposed Wrought-Iron balustrade. These are the plans that I gave to the railing folks, along with a crude life-sized plywood mock-up to locate all of the mounting points. If you click on the image, you'll see an enlargement and drastic improvement in the line drawing. The plans that I printed actually had dimensions everywhere, but this is more realistic. I also gave them a printed actual sized curvy baluster on four sheets of paper taped together. This was used as the template in the actual fabrication of the balusters.
	Otto is the railing guy who bent each of the balusters with a keen eye. That's a single baluster that he is making many little bends on with that hand bending machine. Only 10 more to go, Otto! This isn't his normal kind of work, but I think he would be pleased with the installed result.
	For the handrail, I figured I'd continue on the birdseye theme, and also I wanted to string rope lights inside the handrail (you can see the glow at left), so obviously this was going to be custom also. Click on the image to enlarge.
	To create it, I started with a nice scrap 1" thick by about 5" wide board, ripped pieces off the sides, and then joined them to the original large piece. The result is "book matched" grain - perfectly matched grain symmetry on either side of the glue line. If you click on the image and study the enlargement, the glue line becomes clear, and you can see the symmetry.
	The pieces that folded under are small enough so that it left a 1" recess for the lights. It's too hard to take a picture of this accurately, but the effect is pretty nice - like a staircase nightlight.